from the taking-things-for-granted dept

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes: texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.

The Internet Archive is the world's online memory, holding the only copies of many historic (and not-so-historic) Web pages that have long disappeared from the Web itself.

This morning at about 3:30 a.m. a fire started at the Internet Archive's San Francisco scanning center.

Good news:

no one was hurt and no data was lost. Our main building was not affected except for damage to one electrical run. This power issue caused us to lose power to some servers for a while.

Bad news:

Some physical materials were in the scanning center because they were being digitized, but most were in a separate locked room or in our physical archive and were not lost. Of those materials we did unfortunately lose, about half had already been digitized. We are working with our library partners now to assess.

That loss is unfortunate, but imagine if the fire had been in the main server room holding the Internet Archive's 2 petabytes of data. Wisely, the project has placed copies at other locations:

We have copies of the data in the Internet Archive in multiple locations, so even if our main building had been involved in the fire we still would not have lost the amazing content we have all worked so hard to collect.

That's good to know, but it seems rather foolish for the world to depend on the Internet Archive always being able to keep all its copies up to date, especially as the quantity of data that it stores continues to rise. This digital library is so important in historical and cultural terms: surely it's time to start mirroring the Internet Archive around the world in many locations, with direct and sustained support from multiple governments. They can also help provide the Internet Archive with a wider, more international range of content, to make an even more representative store of the world's digital activity.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As technology advances, it gets easier and easier to make all kinds of complicated things. Information spreads more easily, and it's more and more difficult to keep technology away from any particular group of people. It's an exciting time, but it could also be a bit scary. The knowledge of how to design and build nuclear weapons has existed for decades now, and more countries are developing their own nuclear weapons programs (sometimes with the help of other nuclear-capable countries). Here are just a few things that might keep you awake as the Doomsday Clock is just 5 minutes away from midnight.

from the nice-try,-act dept

A few months back, we wrote about how two different groups had sent letters concerning a key part of Rep. Bob Goodlatte's proposed patent reform bill: the "covered business methods" program (CBM), which allows for a much faster process for challenging and rejecting bad patents. A very narrow version of this program was introduced in the 2011 America Invents Act, but only for financial services patents. One of the ideas that many people support is expanding this program to software and other business method patents. It's difficult to think of a reason to be against this unless you have a ton of really bad patents. As we noted in that original article, the App Developer's Alliance -- a trade group representing an awful lot of app developers (and, it should be noted, a sponsor of our site), sent a letter signed by hundreds of app developers asking Congress to expand this program. On the flip side, there was a bunch of old stodgy companies that have seen their innovative days disappear into the past: Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm. Companies that have become reliant on abusing the patent system to keep out competition, rather than continuing to innovate.

That letter was actually put together by the BSA (the "Business Software Alliance"), a trade group that pretends it represents "the business software industry," but which everyone knows takes its marching orders from Microsoft. In a recent interview with a BSA official, Tim Lee at the Washington Post pointed out that Microsoft seems very opposed to the expansion of CBM, and suggests that Microsoft is driving the BSA's position against this. He also points out that there's an obvious reason for this: Microsoft has a ton of low-quality patents that it doesn't want to lose. The BSA official tries to tap dance around the whole thing, but doesn't make much sense. Basically, they don't like CBM because there are other ways to deal with bad patents -- even though those aren't working.

Of course, Microsoft is not exactly known for attacking on a single front. Another well-known Microsoft front group is a group called ACT, the Association for Competitive Technology, which calls itself a "grassroots advocacy organization" representing "small and mid-size app developers," despite the fact that the organization only seems to reflect Microsoft's interests. ACT has also set up a related organization specifically for app developers, called "ACT 4 APPS" which looks like it's trying to be what the App Developer's Alliance actually is, but without actually caring what actual app developers want. For example, last week, it sent a letter to Goodlatte arguing against CBM, just like the BSA, but in complete contrast to the App Developer's Alliance. The App Developer's Alliance has hundreds of names signed onto their letter in favor of expanding CBM and being able to knock out bad patents quickly.

In contrast, ACT 4 APPS' letter could only turn up 14 signatures. And almost all of them appear to have some sort of close connection to... (you guessed it)... Microsoft. One of the signatures is from a former ACT employee, who appears to have just left a few months ago. And with at least ten of the other signatures, they appear to be Microsoft partners. Hell, the CEO of District Computers is involved in so many Microsoft efforts it's tough to keep track of them all:

Steve is currently is one of Microsoft's 21 Worldwide SMB Partner Area Leads (PAL); one of the three in the North American Region, representing the United States. He sits on the Microsoft US Small Business Specialist Community Partner Advisory Council (PAC). Also Steve is active on the U.S. Board of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), while maintainting the role of the president of the DC Chapter of the same organization.

Also, most of the companies on the list appear to be IT shops, helping companies set up (of course) Microsoft software and systems, rather than what most people think of as actual "app developers." And many of them are based in DC, rather than around the country. Real "grassroots."

When you look at the letters from the BSA and from ACT, it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is deathly afraid of this accelerated review of crappy patents, and it's getting various groups to "front" that effort with letters to Congress. But when you dig deeper into those letters and look, it's pretty clear this is just Microsoft knowing that an awful lot of its patents are likely to be of very low quality, and easily challenged under such a program. Next time, perhaps Microsoft should focus on actually innovating, rather than betting so much of its strategy on shaking down companies with weak patents.

from the used-for-commentary dept

Honestly, if there's anything more stupid than the music industry and song-writers going after lyrics sites, I can't imagine what that thing might be. We've talked in the past about how short-sighted it is for the profiteers of interest in songs targeting websites that do little beyond promoting interest in those same songs. Even the most obviously single-purpose lyric site that does nothing but post song lyrics is likely innocuous at worst and beneficial to all involved at best. Yet they're constant targets. Blech.

But sometimes this goes beyond blinder-vision and moves into a complete mis-targeting. That seems to be the case with the inclusion of RapGenius.com on the National Music Publisher's Association hitlist of sites from their press conference on Monday. The NMPA insisted all sites immediately pull lyrics off the site. RapGenius, for those of you not in the know, is much more than a lyrics site. But, according to one guy that I think I've heard of before:

David Lowery, a veteran of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker who has tracked the sites in his research for the University of Georgia, says they are big business.

“Unlicensed lyric sites are largely ignored as copyright infringers, but in fact these sites generate huge web traffic and involve more money than one might think,” he said. “The lyric business is clearly more valuable in the Internet age.”

What?!? First, it's hard to square these sites being ignored with their constantly being targeted and sued. Second, to understand what a site like RapGenius is and does, you actually have to look at the site. A cursory glance shows that the entire point of the site is to foster a conversation and commentary around lyrics (and more), their meaning, and their interpretations. This is done through user annotations, fostering a back and forth that often times includes the songwriters themselves. As RapGenius founder Ilan Zechory notes:

“Rap Genius is so much more than a lyrics site! The lyrics sites the NMPA refers to simply display song lyrics, while Rap Genius has crowdsourced annotations that give context to all the lyrics line by line, and tens of thousands of verified annotations directly from writers and performers. These layers of context and meaning transform a static, flat lyric page into an interactive, vibrant art experience created by a community of volunteer scholars. Furthermore, music is only a small part of what we do. Rap Genius is an interactive encyclopedia for annotation of all texts — anyone can upload and annotate texts relating to music, news, literature, religion, science, their personal lives, or anything else they want,” he concluded.

So, the questions are pretty obvious. First, why is the NMPA going after a site that is clothed in several layers of Fair Use armor? And second, why is an association that is supposed to protect the rights of all their songwriting members going after a site that many of them appear to enjoy using. Finally, what the hell kind of good is supposed to come of any of this? I'm not sure what the end-game is supposed to be for the NMPA, but this looks like a massive swing-and-a-miss to me. Oh, and it should be noted that people appear to have posted Techdirt articles to RapGenius as well, and everyone at Techdirt thinks that's great. We'd actually be really pissed off if some misguided attempt to squeeze money out of the site meant that our own content was held back and less widely distributed.

from the we-want-to-keep-our-wrong-the-way-it-is! dept

It's been less than two weeks since the Second Circuit Appeals Court issued a stay on Judge Scheindlin's decision finding elements of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional and, very oddly and with little evidence, kicked the judge off the case for appearances of "bias" and "impropriety."

1.) the Daniels case in which she allegedly showed an "appearance of impropriety" by suggesting a plaintiff file a case (Floyd v. New York -- the stop and frisk case under discussion) as "related" in order for it to be accepted by her court was done to avoid violating the protective order in Daniels -- something the plaintiff's attempt to bring contempt proceedings would have done. By marking it as "related," the plaintiff could pursue the city without violating the protective order.

2.) the articles in which she allegedly showed bias against the NYPD actually showed nothing of the sort. Certain quotes may have been framed by the writers to indicate this, but Scheindlin provided the interviews with the understanding that she would not discuss the pending stop-and-frisk case.

The Second Circuit's spontaneous decision, apparently without briefing and coming out of the blue, was factually predicated upon a "relatedness" question mentioned in the record before the Court of Appeals and in the footnoted NYT article referred to by the Circuit. But, if that was really the reason for the trial judge's removal, the decision was both wrong, and, worse, unnecessary.

Let's get real here: Judge Scheindlin is the government's worst nightmare. She gives the defense, the accused, the black, the Hispanic, a fair shake. She has demonstrated throughout her career that she will not let agents or assistants roll over the Constitution. They despise her for not being a team player, and dread a case getting sent to her courtroom.

As for Local Rule 13, the related case rule, she did nothing that isn't done daily. Worse yet, most of the time the related case rule works to the government's favor, as judges who sign search and wiretap warrants get the cases when the takedown comes, making it essentially impossible to obtain neutral review of their grant of the warrants. The government survives on this ploy, and we all know it. This isn't about the Circuit panel beating up on the local rule.

The discussion as to whether the city (meaning its lawyers, the NYPD's legal counsel and Mayor Bloomberg) was able to bring enough heat to push Scheindlin out is ongoing. Keep in mind that the "improprieties" of Davis case -- the appeals court's justification for Scheindlin's removal -- occurred in 2007. [Full relevant conversation embedded below.] It's been nearly six years since and no questions have been raised about Scheindlin's judicial propriety until now.

Does someone in New York have enough influence to nudge a federal appeals court in a certain direction? We'd all like to believe federal courts can't be swayed by local interests, but there's definitely a lots of pressure being exerted in hopes of overturning Scheindlin's decision.

First and foremost, newly elected mayor Bill de Blasio hasn't been shy about his opposition to stop-and-frisk. As the new mayor, he certainly has the power to end the stop-and-frisk program as well as rescind the city's appeal of the ruling. Or at least he could have until the Second Circuit froze everything in place pending rewritten appeals, some of which have already made their way to the court.

"What we want to do is to make sure that the reforms that were recommended by the last court do not go into place," PBA president Patrick Lynch said. "This court appeal must go forward. We want to make sure the police officers' opinions are heard in the court."

The unions said the rulings would unfairly taint the integrity of the police force and re-write rules governing officer conduct.

"This affects how we do our job, it protects our contract and labor rights and it affects the responsibilities that we have on a regular basis on the street," Lynch said.

If Lynch is truly concerned about the decision "tainting" the "integrity of the police force," he's several hundred million dollars worth of city settlements too late. "Re-writing" these rules would simply make them compliant with the Constitution, something the NYPD should have been safeguarding all along, rather than just when forced to by lawsuits.

The city's counsel, Michael Cardozo, has done the unions one better: he's asking for the decision to be vacated entirely. Cardozo's motion leverages the appeals court's "appearances of impropriety and bias" into full-blown, factually baseless claims that Scheindlin is, and always has been, a hater of all things cop- and city-related.

In the filing on Saturday, Michael A. Cardozo, the corporation counsel, said that Judge Scheindlin's decisions "continue, unfairly and improperly, to cloud the public's perception of the N.Y.P.D."

"The district court's orders lend credence to the notion that the N.Y.P.D. unfairly targets minorities for stops and frisks," Mr. Cardozo wrote, "undermining its ability to carry out its mission effectively."

He also made reference to Judge Scheindlin's findings that in stopping and frisking people, the department had violated the Constitution and resorted to a "policy of indirect racial profiling."

"Wrongly labeling the N.Y.P.D. — and the City — a racial profiling entity and flouter of the Fourth Amendment should be sufficient injustice to vacate the Orders," Mr. Cardozo wrote.

What Cardozo is arguing runs counter to the statistics collected by the NYPD itself on stop-and-frisk. It does target minorities unfairly and these stops frequently go beyond the legal concept of the Terry stop, doing away with reasonable suspicion in favor of a checklist that could be filled out post facto to attribute suspicion to such vagaries as "furtive movement" or "actions indicative of casing."

This is a last-minute push by Bloomberg's administration to control the future and leave de Blasio facing an uphill battle against a police force openly contemptuous of any attempts to control it. As ugly as that is, it's even worse that Bloomberg apparently needs to have this last win -- and last word -- before he turns over the reins to his successor.

At this point, everything is up in the air, but its apparent the Bloomberg administration and "his" police department are unwilling to make even the smallest change to current practices, despite racking up millions of dollars in settlements every year and a growing number of people unwilling to cede more of their civil liberties, no matter how "effective" the unconstitutional program is.

from the that's-not-how-the-law-works dept

In an odd bit of timing, I happen to be writing this post in a nice studio apartment in Midtown Manhattan, which I was able to rent via AirBnB, which has turned out to be a great find. I'm in NYC for a conference and some meetings, and while the conference offered a "special rate" on a hotel, this better located, much nicer, full studio apartment was more than $100 cheaper per night. The owner is a really nice guy who's able to make some money renting out this apartment -- and he's legitimately worried that NY is going to shut this down. And yet, as we noted last month, NY's grandstanding attorney general (is there any other kind?), Eric Schneiderman, has demanded that AirBnB turn over information on every host in NY in an insane fishing trip. His office claims it's just looking for "bad" AirBnB users -- mainly those doing "long-term illegal rentals," but that shouldn't allow for a massive fishing trip into the activities of the 15,000 hosts in the state of NY.

The EFF and CDT have now filed an excellent brief arguing that Schneiderman has no right to this vast treasure trove of information.

"Indiscriminate subpoenas that seek the identity and other personal information of thousands of Internet users without specific justification are improper and should be quashed," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman said. "It is not enough for the state to speculate that some Airbnb users might have broken some law at some unknown point. An online service's users deserve to be protected from fishing expeditions like this one."

In the brief, the groups argue that this is a threat to plenty of people's privacy.

While Airbnb has opposed the subpoena, innocent third parties should not have to rely on a company to protect their private interests.... The Attorney General has not curtailed its request to what it is legitimately entitled to receive, and this type of unfettered dragnet collection of user records should be denied.

Hopefully, the court will quash this overbroad subpoena, and NY will make it clear that merely renting out your place doesn't subject you to random fishing expeditions for information from the state's attorney general.

from the simple-questions dept

We just had a story about how Australia used its equivalent of the NSA to do economic espionage for the sake of improving trade deals and helping private companies by passing along useful info they gleaned from spying on the Japanese. It had become so common that companies getting the info would joke that it had "fallen off the back of a truck." Of course, many have argued that the US is obviously engaged in similar activity. The most damning evidence, of course, was the release a few months ago of details of how the NSA spied on Petrobas, the Brazilian oil giant.

The US has sworn up, down, left and right that it does not use the NSA for economic espionage. In August, the Department of Defense issued a statement to the Washington Post saying:

“The Department of Defense does engage” in computer network exploitation, according to an e-mailed statement from an NSA spokesman, whose agency is part of the Defense Department. “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

Those triple stars were in the original. That was before the Petrobas revelation. After that came out, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tried to explain that away, arguing that it was not for economic espionage at all, but to get a better sense of whether there was an upcoming financial crisis.

What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.

Of course, it's a very blurry line between using that information to create policies that help US companies and just giving the information to them directly. Perhaps it's true that the NSA doesn't hand out the information it gleans from foreign companies directly to US companies to help them understand, say, how a foreign product is built -- but reverse engineering is pretty good these days, so it's doubtful that too many US companies need that kind of help anyway. Instead, it seems to be just as nefarious, and certainly a form of economic espionage, to use this information to create trade policies that clearly boost certain US interests.

But that's certainly happening. The NY Times' giant profile of the NSA's activities that came out earlier this month included a list of "customers" for the NSA. Pay close attention to the last two on the list:

This huge investment in collection is driven by pressure from the agency’s “customers,” in government jargon, not only at the White House, Pentagon, F.B.I. and C.I.A., but also spread across the Departments of State and Energy, Homeland Security and Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative.

Now, one can make a (potentially compelling) argument that of course it's US policy to try to improve situations for American companies. And that's perfectly reasonable -- but it seems like a clearly bogus argument for the NSA to say it "does not do economic espionage" just because it (allegedly) does not do one particular tidbit of economic espionage: directly handing companies information. If, instead, it's spying on foreign companies and then providing that information to the USTR, you can assure that two things are happening: economic policies that help the special interests that have a close relationship with the USTR are getting extra favorable policies in their place, and some of that information is seeping out of the USTR to those companies anyway.

And we've already seen, repeatedly, how the USTR appears to have very cozy relations with certain legacy industries, while having almost no relationship at all with younger, more innovative industries. As such, not only is the NSA clearly engaged in economic espionage, it's doing so to the detriment of actual innovation and economic growth, by using this information to prop up legacy industries, while handicapping the innovative industries.

from the didn't-see-that-coming dept

It's already strange enough that the author of the PATRIOT Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, has come out strongly against the NSA's mass spying, said that James Clapper should be fired and prosecuted, and introduced sweeping new legislation that would significantly curtail the NSA's activities. If you've followed civil liberties issues over the past dozen years or so, Sensenbrenner used to be very much in the camp of folks like Rep. Mike Rogers and Senator Dianne Feinstein -- seen as carrying water for the intelligence community (and industry). The change of heart (even if he claims the original PATRIOT Act was never meant to allow this stuff) is quite impressive.

Even so, it's perhaps even more incredible to see that Sensenbrenner has now gone over to the EU Parliament to admit that the NSA is out of control and needs to be reined in. While it doesn't sound like he got all the way to a complete apology, he appears to have come pretty close. According to Bridget Johnson's writeup at the PJ Tatler:

Sensenbrenner told the EU parliamentarians that “Congress knew the country needed new tools and broader authorities to combat those who meant to harm us, but we never intended to allow the National Security Agency to peer indiscriminately into the lives of innocent people all over the world.”

Sensenbrenner noted that he “worked under strict time constraints” to forge the Patriot Act and get it passed.

“I firmly believe the Patriot Act saved lives by strengthening the ability of intelligence agencies to track and stop potential terrorists, but in the past few years, the National Security Agency has weakened, misconstrued and ignored the civil liberty protections we drafted into the law,” he said, adding that the NSA “ignored restrictions painstakingly crafted by lawmakers and assumed a plenary authority we never imagined.”

“Worse, the NSA has cloaked its operations behind such a thick cloud of secrecy that, even if the NSA promised reforms, we would lack the ability to verify them.”

Sensenbrenner said the “constant stream of disclosures about US surveillance since June has surprised and appalled me as much as it has the American public and our international allies.”

Sensenbrenner promised more strict oversight from Congress, but also noted (realistically) that Congress's authority is mostly limited to domestic spying -- and that the US government needed to work more closely with foreign governments concerning foreign spying. Given who's saying it, this is a rather startling statement.

from the everything-else-is-a-distraction dept

We recently wrote about how Kurt Eichenwald's bizarre and irrational deference to his friends in the security state led him to claim that Ed Snowden is a Chinese spy, whose work was specifically designed to aid China in its attempts to attack the internet. The level of cognitive dissonance to make such an argument is quite stunning. Thankfully, most people seemed to see right through the insanity. In the meantime, over at The Guardian, John Kampfner has what might be considered the much more accurate version of the same story. It notes how the knowledge of the NSA's activities have played right into Russia and China's hands concerning their efforts to gain greater control over the internet:

Slowly but surely governance of the internet is moving from the existing mishmash of institutions and into the hands of national governments. The Chinese call this "cyber autonomy".

Authoritarian regimes are showing ever-greater confidence in restricting information, filtering, blocking, monitoring and punishing anyone who steps over the mark.

And, yes, the knowledge of what the US is doing is giving the Chinese, Russians and plenty of others greater confidence to push for their own agenda. Amazingly, and in a sad statement on the state of the US government today, the report notes that a Chinese official recently argued:
At the recent IGF in Indonesia the Chinese were, for the first time, out in force. One "expert" offered to explain to a US state department official why US human rights standards are not up to scratch and how China could help.
This is, certainly, all just political posturing from a country that has a dreadful human rights record, but as we've noted plenty of times, the loss of any semblance of a moral high ground by the US on human rights has serious consequences. But unlike Eichenwald, Kampfner doesn't blame the messenger. Instead he puts the blame squarely where it belongs -- on the US government for its activities.

American dominance of the internet is being challenged on several fronts. The Obama administration and its spooks only have themselves to blame.

Except, of course, they're using compliant mouthpieces like Eichenwald to, instead, try to blame the messenger. Nothing is going to get fixed here until the current leadership either takes responsibility or is replaced in office by those who will take responsibility.

from the unclear-on-the-concept dept

Former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden has a way of not just being wrong and misleading about the intelligence community whenever he opens his mouth, but he's frequently obnoxious about it. That was very much on display last night when Hayden got to debate reporter Barton Gellman at Duke. Gellman, of course, is one of the three early reporters (along with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras) who had direct access to Ed Snowden and got initial documents directly from him.

As you watch the debate, you see that Gellman was calm and assured, even as Hayden made a bunch of highly questionable to downright misleading and insulting claims -- and when Gellman tried to highlight some of the misleading claims, Hayden got increasingly angry and defensive, even shouting down Gellman at one point.

But there were a few whoppers from Hayden, including this claim:

There are necessary secrets. Our society recognizes privacy or secrecy for a variety of institutions. We do priest/penitent. We do lawyer/client. We do husband/wife. I mean, we recognize that for the greater good, somethings need to be kept out of the public domain. Those are more in the sense of personal privacy. But privacy to an individual is what secrecy is to a state. Both are necessary and both can be abused. Fully aware, alright, that both can be abused.

Talk about your false equivalencies. Privacy for individuals, concerning private actions, is a basic right. Secrecy for governments is not. The two things are not similar in any way other than that they involve content not known by the public. Other than that, the two concepts are quite different. Privacy is something that can be infringed upon. Secrecy, not so.

Even worse, while Hayden is right that both privacy and secrecy can be "abused," the abuses are wholly different situations. When privacy is "abused," it often means violating someone's privacy (i.e., the things Michael Hayden did when he ran the warrantless wiretapping program under George W. Bush). When secrecy is abused, it means that the government is keeping things secret that should be public (i.e., like when Michael Hayden kept it secret that he was tapping phone calls without a warrant). In short, yes, both can be abused, but it seems that it's always the government doing the abusing.

Elsewhere, Hayden made a number of other ridiculous claims, including repeatedly slamming Ed Snowden, falsely claiming that he only went to work for the NSA because of a "preconceived notion" that he wanted to expose (which goes against what every profile of Snowden has said), and not because he "discovered something which offended him." Again, that's not supported by the record, but if Hayden wants to tar and feather Snowden, I guess you'd expect that. But then he pretends that Snowden didn't reveal anything that did or should concern anyone at all.

The agencies weren't doing anything illegal. They weren't doing anything unconstitutional. They were just doing things that offended him [Snowden].

Well, that, and somewhere around half of Congress, a very large percentage of the American public and an even larger percentage of the rest of the world. Also, given how many people in Congress have now argued that what the NSA was doing was out of bounds with the law -- and multiple people inside the US government and elsewhere around the globe have pointed out how important these revelations have been -- it would appear that claiming that these were things that merely offended Snowden is, again, not actually supported by any evidence other than the warped mind of Michael Hayden.

Later in the talk, he argued that Gellman's revealing PRISM was "the most destructive" revelation that's been made so far, because, Hayden claims, terrorists all used to love using Yahoo and Google, and now they don't.

Many legitimate intelligence targets -- we learned two days ago that Yahoo and Google are [shakes head] WERE the internet providers of choice for terrorists world wide.

This is difficult to believe. In fact, it's impossible to believe. First off, it's been widely reported that any serious terrorist group has long known not to use things like American company email systems, because they're being monitored. Second, if the revelations here made it more difficult for terrorists to communicate, isn't that a good thing? Don't we want to disrupt their communications and make it harder for them to plot?

Hayden tried hard (very hard) to make the case that we lived in this wonderful world in which "bad guys" (which he implies are easy to distinguish from everyone else) used American communications systems, so we had this NSA nirvana in that it was super easy to spy on them... until now. He even angrily shouts at Gellman at one point (about 55:50 in the video):

Hayden: This was the most productive source of communications intelligence that NSA had. Your privacy was not involved -- other than the fact that you use Google or Yahoo. But your emails, your accounts, were not the ones being accessed. It was...

Gellman: No, they weren't the ones being targeted.

Hayden: No no. I chose my word... NO!!! I chose my words carefully. YOUR ACCOUNTS were not being accessed. We'll get to this in a minute. This was foreign intelligence. It was a wondrous source of foreign intelligence, made possible by the accident of history and technology, that put most of the world's web traffic inside the United States. [Waves hands at Gellman] Why in God's name would you want to make that public? Why in the world would you want to tell all of these people that we're targeting that 'if you use an American email service, the NSA has the ability -- without working really hard to collect packets on the move out there on the world wide web -- to go and access this information.' That's a body blow for those people who are trying to protect you.

That is... misleading at best. Again, most "foreign targets" that matter already knew better than to use those services. But, more importantly, all of that presupposes that the NSA is good at just spying on "the bad guys" and avoiding the rest of us "good guys." But there's little evidence to support that claim. As Gellman points out in response, the NSA collects tens of millions of content from Americans which it can then search through -- even if we're not "bad guys." Second, it assumes that everyone should be happy that the NSA can spy on just about anyone without too much trouble. Many of us believe that the job of the world is not to make life easier on the NSA at all. Third, it assumes that this is not an issue for public debate -- something that a majority of the public has rejected. Basically, it's the viewpoint of an insider's insider.

There was a lot more in the talk, including an audience Q&A. The audience questions were definitely more critical for Hayden. The first question laid out Hayden's own activities in the wake of 9/11, including the warrantless wiretapping, and asked Hayden directly why he hasn't been prosecuted yet. Hayden claims that he did everything "within his current authorities" and told President Bush things that he could do if given authority, and said that his lawyers at NSA agreed that the President could give him that authority -- and that the FISA court had agreed that the President had such authorities. And he calls the revelation of the warrantless wiretapping "a mighty kerfuffle." And then claims that the FISA Amendments Act further legitimized his own warrantless wiretapping -- which is a... unique interpretation of the law. Gellman, in response, adds back in many of the parts that Hayden skipped over, including the DOJ pointing out that the program was unlawful, and Hayden deciding to move forward with the program anyway.

At the end, a woman asks Hayden how he can justify spying on our "greatest allies" such as Germany. Hayden is somewhat dismissive of this question, pointing out, more or less, that he's not concerned about spying on foreigners, because they're foreigners and that's what he's supposed to do. Now, he's technically correct under the law. And then he tries to explain why it's okay to spy on Angela Merkel by using an example of her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, and the well-known controversy over his helping Gazprom secure a pipeline deal in his final days of office, and then accepting a job with Gazprom soon after. Hayden suggests he's clearly offended by a public official taking a high paying job with a company helped by his connections soon after leaving office:

I think a legitimate question is whether that's really legitimate statecraft, or something different? And I think American policy makers might want to know. And therefore we collect intelligence against that for that intelligence need.

Of course, that suggests that as long as there's anything that policy makers might want to know about, then it's okay to spy on anyone. That seems questionable. Also, given that Hayden himself, upon leaving office, took a lucrative job with the Chertoff Group, a company that clearly benefits from his and others' ties to government, is that really the best example that Hayden wants to roll out there?

from the time-and-relative-dementia-in-copyright dept

It's amazing the stories that find me these days. Apparently, a guy named Stef Coburn, whose father Tony Coburn wrote the very first episode of Doctor Who, is claiming copyright on the Tardis, the iconic police phone booth that is also Doctor Who's mode of transportation (through time and space, of course). The younger Coburn claims that his father came up with the idea for the Tardis and told his children about it over the dinner table. He then takes it a step further and claims the informal agreement his father had with the BBC expired upon his death (which happened way back in 1977), at which point the rights transferred to his mother, who has since passed them on to him. He's now demanding that he get paid for every use of the Tardis since his father's death.

"It is by no means my wish to deprive legions of Doctor Who fans (of whom I was never one) of any aspect of their favourite children's programme. The only ends I wish to accomplish, by whatever lawful means present themselves, involve bringing about the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due, of my father James Anthony Coburn's seminal contribution to Doctor Who, and proper lawful recompense to his surviving estate."

It would be great to get some UK copyright lawyers to weigh in on the specifics, but it seems like there are a bunch of interrelated issues here, none of which bode well for Coburn's claim. There's a question of whether there's even a legitimate copyright here at all (copyright is supposed to be on expression, not ideas)? If there is a legitimate copyright, would it even have belonged to Coburn and not the producers of the show he was hired to write for? If it did belong to him and not the producers, what was the nature of the contract -- formal or informal -- between them and was there any indication that it would end upon his death? And, of course, there's the only issue of laches, for not doing a damn thing about this for 35 years. It seems fairly likely that nearly all of those questions are likely to be answered in a way that favors the BBC and not the younger Coburn.

Once again, though, it seems like yet another case where the popular myth of copyright -- that it's about "ownership" of some "creation" -- leads to this kind misguided attack.

from the question-of-power dept

The problems with DRM for videos, music, ebooks and games are well known. Despite those issues for the purchasers of digital goods, companies love DRM because it gives them control over how their products are used -- something that has been much harder to achieve in the analog world. The risk is that as digital technologies begin to permeate traditional physical products, they will bring with them new forms of DRM, as this post by Karsten Gerloff about Zoe, one of Renault's electric cars, makes clear:

When you buy a Renault Zoe, the battery isn't included. Instead, you sign a rental contract for the battery with the car maker. In a Zoe owner's forum, user Franko30 reports that the contract contains a clause giving Renault the right to prevent your battery from charging at the end of the rental period. According to an article in Der Spiegel, the company may also do this when you fall behind on paying the rent for the battery.

This means that Renault has some way of remotely controlling the battery charging process. According to the Spiegel article, the Zoe (and most or all other electric cars) collect reams of data on how you use them, and send this data off to the manufacturer without your knowledge. This data tells the company where you are going, when, and how fast, where you charge the battery, and many other things besides. We already knew that Tesla was doing this with its cars since the company's very public spat with a journalist who reviewed one of their cars for the New York Times. Seeing the same thing in a mass market manufacturer like Renault makes clear just how dangerous this trend is.

He goes on to point out the ways in which such DRM capabilities can and probably will be abused:

This could be the manufacturer, shutting down your car as you fall behind on the battery rent because you just lost your job, meaning that it becomes harder for you to find work. It could be the government, compelling the manufacturer to do its bidding. In his forum post, Franko30 predicts that at some point, governments may simply ask car manufacturers to block charging near controversial political events (e.g. a G8 summit), in order to prevent you from participating in demonstrations. Or it could be any random criminal out there, gaining access to this mechanism by bribing a Renault employee.

Gerloff notes that one way to avoid these problems is to choose electric cars that put the user in control, and that means those built with free software. Of course, as President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, he would say that, but he's right. The trouble is, it's hard enough buying a smartphone running entirely on free software; an electric car based on fully-hackable open code, with all that this implies for road safety, is almost certainly never going to happen.

A former diplomat has also confirmed Australian intelligence agencies have long targeted Japanese companies. Writing in The Japan Times, Professor Gregory Clark said Australian companies were beneficiaries of intelligence operations.

"In Australia, favoured firms getting spy material on Japanese contract policies and other business negotiations used to joke how [it had] 'fallen off the back of a truck'," Professor Clark wrote.

The article has more details, but doesn't reveal how the materials were obtained. However, since Australia is part of the "Five Eyes" inner circle of snooping countries that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, it seems likely that information of interest from those partners also found its way to Australian companies. SMH quotes Clark as saying:

Business information is a main target for [intelligence] agencies

It will be interesting to see if later releases from Snowden's hoard of documents show any evidence of this Australian use of NSA materials for industrial espionage.

It's well researched, and contains plenty of documented examples of situations where China has applied pressure to media organizations in various ways -- subtle and not-so-subtle -- in order to re-frame discussions so that they are more favorable to itself and its agendas:

Since coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has constructed a multi-layered system for censoring unwanted news and stifling opposing viewpoints within China. Over the past two decades, this domestic apparatus has spawned mechanisms that extend some censorship to media outlets based outside China. Reflecting the adaptive nature of Chinese authoritarianism, such pressures are a complex mix of overt official actions and more discreet dynamics. They manifest themselves in four key ways:

Direct action by Chinese diplomats, local officials, security forces, and regulators both inside and outside China. These measures obstruct newsgathering, prevent the publication of undesirable content, and punish overseas media outlets that fail to heed restrictions.

Indirect pressure applied via proxies -- including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments -- who take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing.

Incidents such as cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to the central Chinese authorities but serve the party's aims and result from an atmosphere of impunity for those attacking independent media.

CIMA's report offers a fascinating snapshot of a development that is important for both the media and online worlds. Although the details may change over time, the basic methods are likely to remain the same, which makes this a valuable primer of what to watch out for in the future.